Day: August 11, 2008

Ender’s Game – The Comic

Sometime later this year, Marvel is scheduled to begin what is the first in what will probably become a number of Ender’s Game-related series. Christopher Yost is doing the writing for the initial 5-part series, with Pasqual Ferry providing the art.

For those who haven’t read it, Ender’s Game is the sort of amazing science fiction that Orson Scott Card used to write in between his homophobic rants (the homophobic rants haven’t gone anywhere, but when was the last time you read a decent novel from Card?)

Neandertal Mitochondrial DNA Sequenced

The August 8, 2008 issue of Cell includes a paper documenting the sequencing of mitochondrial DNA extracted from a 38,000 year old Neandertal bone (emphasis added):

A complete mitochondrial (mt) genome sequence was reconstructed from a 38,000 year-old Neandertal individual with 8341 mtDNA sequences identified among 4.8 Gb of DNA generated from ?0.3 g of bone. Analysis of the assembled sequence unequivocally establishes that the Neandertal mtDNA falls outside the variation of extant human mtDNAs, and allows an estimate of the divergence date between the two mtDNA lineages of 660,000 ± 140,000 years. Of the 13 proteins encoded in the mtDNA, subunit 2 of cytochrome c oxidase of the mitochondrial electron transport chain has experienced the largest number of amino acid substitutions in human ancestors since the separation from Neandertals. There is evidence that purifying selection in the Neandertal mtDNA was reduced compared with other primate lineages, suggesting that the effective population size of Neandertals was small.

That highlighted portion means that the mitochondrial DNA of Neandertal differed so substantially from that of humans that interbreeding almost certainly occurred rare if at all.

The researchers behind this paper are working on sequencing of the full Neandertal genome.

Monsterpocalypse Figure Photos

Privateer Press has a full gallery of all of the Monsterpocalypse figures that are part of its kaiju collectible miniatures game it is planning to release in October. My only complaint is having to wait until October to get my hands on these. I especially like that apparently they’re going with a plain base — the one thing I don’t like about buying CMGs is the ugly-assed, stat-filled bases most of them are saddled with. The World of Warcraft CMG is also going to have plain bases that fit into larger stat-filled holders.

The Monsterpocalypse game is apparently divided into different factions attempting to conquer the world/wreak havoc,

The Terrasaurs

The Syndicate

The Planet Eaters

The Martian Menace

G.U.A.R.D.

The Lords of Cthul – the inevitable Lovecraftian component. Someone needs to craft a version of Godwin’s Law along the lines of Lovecraft’s Law – given any group of fanboys, game company, comic, etc., the probability of someone swiping from Lovecraft approaches one.

bbPress 1.0 Alphas Coming Soon

There was finally some activity on the bbPress front the other day, with an announcement that bbPress 1.0 alphas would be coming over the next few weeks. WordPress 2.6 broke the account integration between WordPress and bbPress 0.9x, and hopefully the 1.0 version will restore that as well as put bbPress back on track.